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LENS CRAFTER: Photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders almost skipped the September Seventies and Eighties fashion reunion hosted by his friend, British hairstylist Harry King. But it was there that Greenfield-Sanders found the idea for his next project. As soon as Greenfield-Sanders saw the era’s top models chatting each other up with their progeny, he thought, “This screams Vanity Fair group portrait.

"My work has always been about serial obsessions." says portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders. When he was in his "artist" period, he photographed more than 700 luminaries of the art world over a 20-year span. Then it was musicians - he photographed them by the hundreds. Later he turned his lens on more than 100 fashion designers, and then he fixated on stars of pornography. His latest image obsession is prominent African-Americans.

This distinctive and elegant follow-up to 2008's "The Black List: Vol. 1" follows a similar minimalist path in gathering prominent black figures to reveal something candid and insightful about themselves or their take on the world.

This month, HBO will release the second volume in its “The Black List” film series, which features prominent African Americans all over the country who are making history. The Bay State’s governor was one of a select few who made this “List,” which will premiere to local audiences at the Strand Theatre in Dorchester on Feb. 18.

“I was honored to be asked,” Patrick said. “I’m in pretty heavy company.”

When Timothy Greenfield-Sanders was taking promotional photographs for Toni Morrison's first opera, "Margaret Garner", back in 2005, the Nobel Prize-winning writer suggested that he shoot a portfolio of black divas. Greenfield-Sanders liked the idea, but he had something broader in mind. He asked his friend Elvis Mitchell, a journalist and critic, to help him think of subjects for a portrait series.